In the growing healthcare domain, it is desirable to have devices that will allow a user to communicate effectively with a doctor or a hospital environment irrespective of language and region. The healthcare facilities in rural areas need to be developed for improving the health status of people in developing or developed countries. Improvement in the healthcare domain can be achieved by making the medical facilities available to rural areas as well. However there are certain limitations in the widespread use of the medical facilities in rural areas. One of the significant limitations is illiteracy or the non-knowledge of a common language like English.
In healthcare domain, the patient needs to communicate effectively with the doctor or any other caretaker, who might be located at different parts of a country or region. Normally different people from different region speak different languages. As the people in the rural areas or people residing in different parts of the country may not be able to understand the language of communication of the doctor, establishing effective communication between the caller and the doctor, nurse or any other care taker will be difficult. Further in case of emergency the doctor should be conveyed correctly about the severity or urgency of the situation. Most of the time communication is not carried out effectively mainly due to different languages of interaction.
Mobile communication devices have solved the problem of communication to a certain extend and some of the mobile communication devices have the flexibility of adapting to different languages. However normally the mobile phones/communication devices will have soft keypads for language selection. But the visual indicium of the keypad will not change even after the mobile phone is configured to work for a selected language. Adapting to a different language from an in-built language will require special knowledge about the functionality of the mobile phone. So an illiterate person may not be able to efficiently use the existing cell phones.
Thus there exist a need to develop an effective language independent real time communication method and device in healthcare domain. The communication method should be implemented taking care of the illiterate rural population.